Personal Data

In the course of your studies at IU, it is necessary for IU to process data about you. This page informs you about the processing of your personal data on the occasion of the commencement and execution of your studies with IU. If you enter into a student employment relationship with IU, you will receive separate information about data processing in this respect. For details on data processing when using our website, please refer to the website privacy statement available on the Internet. Data processing through online tools will be explained to you in the corresponding tools.

Person responsible and data protection officer

IU Internationale Hochschule GmbH, Juri-Gagarin-Ring 152, 99084 Erfurt, ("IU"), is responsible for processing your personal data. We have appointed Dr. Annette Demmel, SPB DPO Services GmbH, Unter den Linden 21, 10117 Berlin, annette.demmel@spb-dpo-services.com, as our data protection officer.

Purpose of processing

Your personal data will be processed for the following purposes:

• Student administration, including enrollment, conducting studies, issuing ID cards and similar documents, setting and collecting tuition fees, checking attendance and absences if necessary, organizing teaching operations (online and virtual events), registering for and attending courses, providing and distributing teaching materials, receiving and distributing academic credits including plagiarism checks, conducting examinations and issuing examination certificates or transcripts, other general administrative and personnel processes necessary for the proper conduct of teaching operations;

• Providing student support, including interviewing services;

• Maintenance of records required by law, including record keeping;

• Internal and external auditing;

• Posting, performing and billing for any services;

• Fulfillment of statutory notification and reporting obligations;

• Provision of operational IT infrastructure including hardware and software, telecommunications and electronic communications, including the Internet, mobile applications, remote maintenance access, online meetings, other technical facilities for teaching and learning and taking exams using software, licensing and license control, assignment of user rights, debugging and troubleshooting, operation of a firewall and similar security devices, URL and malware filtering and malware reporting, tracking of files copied to removable media, ticket system for inquiries and help desk, use of IT security software and monitoring of lawful use to the extent permitted;

• Internal audits for compliance with legal, regulatory and other corporate governance obligations and internal policies, in case of suspicion of criminal or regulatory offenses to detect them, including the investigation of compliance violations. 

Legal basis for processing

Your personal data is processed on the basis of Article 6 (1) b) of the General Data Protection Regulation ("DS-GVO") for the purpose of implementing the study contract with you.

Where we are required to process your personal data to comply with a legal obligation, we will do so on the basis of Art. 6 (1) c) DS-GVO, or in cases where we transfer your personal data to another group company or to other recipients for the legitimate interests pursued by us or a third party, we will do so on the basis of and in accordance with Art. 6 (1) f) DS-GVO in order to use common operational infrastructure, e.g. IT systems, or online tools for teaching and examinations, including plagiarism control. In exceptional cases where the processing of your personal data is not necessary to carry out the study relationship with you, but we would like to propose such processing to you, we will ask you separately for your consent pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 a). You will then receive more detailed information in this context.

If you decide to communicate with us via WhatsApp for the purpose of carrying out your studies, we will process your personal data to this extent. The legal basis for this data processing by IU is your use of our WhatsApp channels pursuant to Art. 6 (1) p. 1 lit. b) DSGVO. Data processing by WhatsApp is governed by the privacy policy of WhatsApp Ireland Limited, 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland, for users within the European Union, or WhatsApp Inc. for all other users. The Privacy Policy is available at https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/?lg=de&lc=DE&eea=1#privacy-policy. 

If you choose to communicate with us via live chat or chat bot for the purpose of conducting your studies, we will process your name, email address, date and time of delivered messages, and topics and details you make available via live chat or chat bot to that extent. The legal basis for this data processing by IU is your use of our chats according to Art. 6 para. 1 p. 1 lit. b) DSGVO.The data processing by the live chat and chat bot is governed by the privacy policy of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories B.V. with registered seat in Gooimeer 6 - 02, 1411 DD Naarden, Netherlands. The privacy policy is available at https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/genesys-cloud-privacy-policy/.

Recipients

Only employees and teaching staff of IU who are entrusted with activities described in the section 'Purpose of processing' have access to your personal data. In addition, our group companies may provide IT services to us. We will be happy to send you an overview of the group companies. Employees of these companies may have access to your personal data to the extent necessary to perform their tasks. Furthermore, we use the help of various external service providers to operate our IT infrastructure, including electronic communication, the operation of our websites, and administration.

In the context of offering studies via the Internet, including plagiarism control, e.g. online tutorials, we use various functions of external providers (hereinafter referred to as "online tools"), which receive your name, details of your courses and their content, including recordings of your voice and video recordings of you. In this process, your personal data is transferred to countries outside the European Union, in particular to the United States of America. We contractually secure the transfer by concluding the EU standard contracts for data processing in third countries. We will be happy to provide you with a copy if you contact us at datenschutz@iu.org. Detailed information on data processing by the online tools can be found next to the start button of the respective online tool.

If you use the WhatsApp channel of the IU to communicate with us, in addition to employees of WhatsApp and the IU, employees of our contractual partner MessengerPeople GmbH, which manages the WhatsApp channel, will also receive access to your personal data. In this context, it is certainly not excluded that your personal data is stored on WhatsApp servers in the USA. More information on this can be found in WhatsApp's privacy policy https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/?lg=de&lc=DE&eea=1#privacy-policy.

Data categories

We process the following categories of data:

Core and contact data

• Name

• Date of birth

• Gender

• Nationality

• Identity card number or passport number and issuing country or authority

• Photographs

• Private address

• Private contact details

• If you use our WhatsApp channel, information from your status messages as well as date and time of delivered messages

• If you use the live chat or chat bot, we also process information that you make available via the live chat or chat bot

Details of the study relationship

• Details related to the commencement, implementation and termination of studies

• Degree programme

• Details from application procedures, e.g. curriculum vitae

• Entry and exit dates

• Professional training and career

• Qualifications and certificates or degrees

• Competencies

• Course attendance

• Achievements in studies

• Performance assessment

• Examination results

• Exam assessment

• Bank account or other payment data

Insurance data

• Information on long-term care, health, employment and social insurances

• Details of other compulsory or optional insurances

Data related to the IT infrastructure

• Usage data of company IT infrastructure including electronic means of communication, e.g. Internet, telephone and intranet

• Login information such as date or time, pages used, data transmitted and received, courses booked and attended

• Recordings of your voice and video recordings of you in the context of conducting courses or taking examinations via the Internet

How long is your personal data stored?

Your personal data will be stored for the period required by law or for the period we determine in order to perform our duties. Details on the storage period of individual data categories, you can find out on request at datenschutz@iu.org.

Your rights

You can contact us either in writing or by e-mail datenschutz@iu.org to exercise the following rights:

• Access to your data in order to control and verify it,

• Obtain a copy of your personal data,

• rectification, erasure or restriction of processing, this also includes the right to complete incomplete or incorrect data by supplementary communication,

• Right to object to processing,

• You can receive your provided data in a structured, common and machine-readable format and transfer this data to another controller, provided that you have given your consent to the processing or the processing is based on a contract.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority in connection with the processing of your personal data. To exercise this right of complaint, you can contact the supervisory authority responsible for your place of residence or the supervisory authority responsible for the IU:

The Thuringian State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Häßlerstraße 8, 99096 Erfurt.

Why is your personal data collected?

We need your personal data to carry out the study relationship with you. You have the option to refrain from providing your personal data or to provide us with incomplete information. However, this may result in us not being able to carry out the study relationship with you. Please note that as an international company, we have to enable our students to participate in courses partly, sometimes exclusively, via the Internet using online tools. For this purpose, we use the services of various software providers, especially in the United States of America or in other countries outside the European Union. You will find more detailed information on the processing of personal data by online tools next to the start button of the online tool in each case.

Automated decision making and profiling

Your personal data will not be used for automated decision making.